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Monday, April 30, 2012

What an amazing month April has been! It was definitely an incredible month here on the blog with our new design team creating and sharing. Each post from the team not only brought you inspiration but also instructions and supplies so that you could re-create their projects along with them. We added several new features to the blog this month also, including the ability to print blog posts with a simple click of a button. Not only has the blog here been packed with great Sizzix inspiration but so has the blogs of each designer. Today I am sharing some projects from their blogs with you that are full of inspiration!

Anna-Karen Evaldsson crated a fun pop-up greeting card with a fun vintage travel theme. She shares the instructions for how she created the card as well as the technique she used for creating the stained canvas on her card here: http://layersofink.blogspot.com/2012/04/pop-up-card.html.

Tamara Tripodi is our resident eclips expert! She makes the most amazing creations using her eclips. This fun baby gift package is no exception. Check out her great eclips tips on her post here: http://happylifecraftywife.com/?p=1325.

Tiffany Johnson created this fun card as part of our Operation Write Home blog hop this month. This card makes me smile every time I look at it! Tiffany shared details about the card and also about why participating in Operation Write Home was special to her. You can read all of the details on her blog here: http://iheartartblog.com/2012/04/14/operation-write-home-make-em-laugh/.

I hope you have enjoyed all of the inspiration that our team has brought you in April here on the Sizzix blog and on each of their blogs. It is truly a pleasure for each one of us to be sharing ideas and techniques with you for all of the wonderful Sizzix products. We appreciate your visits and comments and can't wait to show you what we have planned for May!

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Hi everyone! Anna-Karin here with my first tutorial on the Sizzix blog. So happy to be posting this! For my tutorial, I decided to use this fun Mailable Frame Scoreboards XL die. It has so many possibilities and is great for creating little gifts. If you don’t make it too dimensional it will fit right into an ordinary envelope. You can put anything you want inside the frame: a photo, a stamped image, flowers, etc. You can also make it just as if you are making a card, but this one will be easy to display as a frame for the recipient, since it can stand on its own.

I used quite a few techniques in this tutorial, which can be applied to all kinds of different projects. The frame itself is covered by sticky-backed canvas, giving it a great texture.

Mix a very watery mix of Sail Boat Blue and Pool paint dabber – it needs to be very watery, mine was a bit too thick. Cut a 12"x12" sheet of white sticky-backed canvas in half. Mist it heavily with water. Paint the canvas with a paint brush, if the paint appears too opaque or dark, mist with more water. My canvas was a bit darker than I wanted it to be, so I rinsed it under the tap quickly.

Mist the canvas with a mix of Perfect Pearls and water (a couple of ice-cream scoops of Perfect Pearls in a mini mister). Also mist with Turquoise Perfect Pearls mist. This gives a subtle glimmer to the canvas, which is only really visible when it is dry.

Add a bit more paint to your watery paint mix and splatter it onto the canvas with a paint brush. Since the surface is still wet, the spots will spread a bit and give a great texture and pattern to the canvas.

Let the canvas dry, you can help it a long a bit with a heat gun. When the canvas is dry, adhere it to a 6"x13" white mat board. Even though the canvas has adhesive on the back, I covered the mat board with a glue stick first, to make sure it would stick down firmly.

When the glue has dried, place the canvas-covered mat board on the Frame die, with the canvas side facing down (that is opposite of the photo, sorry about that!) and die-cut it.

The Frame ScoreBoards die both cuts and scores the frame, making it very easy to assemble. Remove the window piece (keep it for later) and fold along the score lines.

Ink the edges with Faded Jeans ink using an ink applicator tool. I also added a bit of ink to the fold lines with a Cut-n-Dry pen nib.

Cut a piece of Peeled Paint cardstock and emboss it in the Dot-Matrix folder. Sand to reveal the inner core. This is one my favourite embossing folders, with those great irregular dots, and it works well here, since it repeats the splatter dots on the frame.

Adhere the embossed paper to the inside of the frame with double-sided tape.

Using Wonder tape (or another strong adhesive), adhere the back of the frame to the front. Make sure no tape is visible in the window before closing.

Cut three flowers with the Tattered Florals die with the remaining canvas-covered mat board pieces. Ink the edges with Faded Jeans. Ink up a script stamp with Stormy Sky, mist twice with water and stamp on the flowers. The text on the flowers works nicely together with the text on the owl.

From Peeled Paint cardstock, cut a Mini Flourish, Mini Bird and the smallest flower on the Tattered Florals die. I gave the bird an eye with a fine-tipped black pen. Sand the pieces to reveal a bit of the inner core. Then coat them with Rock Candy Distress Stickles.

Paint the tree with Vintage Photo Distress crackle paint and set aside to dry.

When it is dry, ink the cracks with Walnut Stain ink.

Stamp the Big Eyes owl three times on watercolour paper with Archival Ink Coffee. You can use another paper if you want to, but I like the texture of watercolour paper and how inks and water blend on the paper.

Ink the owls with Distress Inks. Mist two of the owls with the Perfect Pearls and water mix.

Cut the first owl out completely, but remove the branch. Cut the top part of the head off from the second owl (sounds terrible, poor owl!). Using a craft knife, cut along all the feathers on the body and tail of the second owl, giving the owl a fun texture. On the third owl, coat the eyes with Glossy Accents, when dry, cut the eyes out (it was still drying when I took the photo, so I couldn’t cut them out yet). Also cut out the beak and the feet.

Die-cut a Tattered Banner from manila cardstock, ink it with Antique Linen and Frayed Burlap and then stamp your sentiment on it. Now you can start gluing everything to the frame. I used Glossy Accents for this.

Glue the first and second owl together, and then adhere the eyes and the beak with foam dots for added dimension. Trim the branch so that it fits the frame (it mustn’t stick out below, since then the frame won’t be able to stand up). Position the tail of the owl behind one of the branches and glue the feet on top, so that it looks as if the owl is sitting on the branch. Glue the owl and branch to the frame.

Place the banner underneath the branch and layer two blue canvas/mat board flowers and the green flower underneath and on top of the branch.

Glue the Mini Flourish at the top left corner of the frame and layer one big and one small canvas/mat board flower on top. I also added some pearls and a little strip of manila cardstock with the word ‘smile’ stamped on top.

Here’s what it looks like from the side when it stands up. I also wrote my name and the date on the base of the frame.

The frame is ready! Here you can see the dimension from the side. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!